Imaginary Photo Museum

by Renate Gruber and L. Fritz Gruber

Book Overview

More than 450 photos, b & w and color of the most outstanding photographers of the past and present--Brady, Walker Evans, Stieglitz, May Ray, etc. portraits, landscapes, nudes, still lifes,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 051754797X
• ISBN13: 9780517547977
• Release Date: December 1982
• Publisher: Random House Value Publishing
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Admirer of The "Amazing" Photo Museum

The book's editors explain that this is the collection of photographs they would bring together and house in one museum, if that were possible. Instead of bringing together a physical collection, the editors create a printed anthology that can serve as the ultimate photography textbook. If used as a textbook, The Imaginary Photo Museum can teach anyone with patience how to see a photograph and ultimately how to be a photographer. I am a self-taught photographer, and my first instruction book was The Imaginary Photo Museum. From this book, I learned to love exceptional photographers: Berenice Abbott, Diane Arbus, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Robert Frank, Walker Evans, Man Ray, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy -- too many to list. I didn't realize it at the time, but I also fell in love with settings: New York, Paris, and the American West, in particular. From the "Chronology" section of the book, I learned photography's beginnings in the 1830s and examined the path of time to the late 1970s, which is where the book leaves off, just before its original publication in 1981. To dramatize the distinction, the book divides and sections off black and white photography from color photography. I took notice of this sharp contrast in arrangement and learned to see the two methods differently. The book's layout also taught me ways to categorize photographs via chapters on objects, nudes, landscapes, portraits, cities, events, and "visions," or abstractions. In some ways, owning a book of reproductions is better than a visit to a museum to view originals. In my near-sighted way, I've spent hours poring over the photographs in the book. By close examination, I recognized the importance of lighting in photography. I internalized camera angles and distance without learning any vocabulary for what I remembered. I learned to look for contrast and how it can be used to direct a viewer's attention. By being able to spend time with the book, I learned to study detail in a way that no trip to a museum could ever teach me. This is an amazing book, and I'm sorry it has been out of print for a long time.